5th Grade: Building & Driving Robots

5th graders in Mr. Lusk and  Mr. Heaton's classes have pretty much finished building their robots and are now completing challenges moving blocks in order to improve their robot driving skills. This 5th grade robotics unit focuses on the real world problem of using robots to clean up nuclear waste. In this unit, we look at the real world example of what happened in 2011 with the destruction of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan as a result of the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. 

After students build their robots and practice driving them by completing simple challenges,  we have a big class competition where students work together with another team to clean up the "nuclear waste". The team with the most points wins. 

 3rd grade: Studying Forces and Simple Machines

Third Graders are studying forces in this first PLTW unit and so far they have worked in small groups to build simple machines that include wheels and axles, inclined planes, levers and pulleys. They use VEX kits to build the machines. Their knowledge of forces and simple machines will help them build a compound machine to help solve the real world problem of rescuing a (plastic!) tiger out of a moat it fell in at the zoo! 

3rd graders working together to build their simple machines.

At the beginning of class, students have a warm-up question related to the science we are studying that day. They write for 2 minutes and then share their answer with their partner. 

Hard at work building!

Testing out their wheel and axle design. Can it carry a heavy or tall load?